Thursday, October 11, 2012

How To Be More Interesting (In 10 Simple Steps)


How to be interesting (in 10 stupid-simple steps):







1.Go exploring.Explore ideas, places, and opinions. The inside of the echo chamber is where all the boring people hang out.






2. Share what you discover.

Things To Say Before You Die (40)


Before you’re sprawled on your deathbed, there are some things you really have to say. They’re not complicated. They’re not poetry.
They’re just short sentences with big meaning.
I hope they get you talking.

40
“I wonder.”






Give yourself time to think so the time you spend doing

Reduce Stress by Working Longer (at What You Do Well)


When you put what you do well to good use, you feel less stress and you feel better about yourself.
That’s a conclusion drawn from arecent Gallup Daily tracking studyof more than 5,000 adults conducted in August 2012.
“Fifty-two percent of Americans who use their strengths for zero to three hours a day are stressed, but this falls to 36% for Americans who use their strengths for 10 hours per day or more.” Respondents also report feeling less “worry… anger, sadness or physical pain.”
Additionally, according to Gallup “adults who use their strengths for 10 hours or more per day are 22 percentage points more likely to say they have enough energy to get things done than are those who use their strengths for three hours or less.”
These findings are not startling, but they are revealing because they link the application of what we do well to how we feel. Anyone who has worked in a job, or at a job, where they feel their talents and skills are not being utilized will attest to feeling underappreciated. And very often stressed and discouraged.
So the challenge is how do you apply your strengths at work? Find the job that draws upon your abilities so that you feel purposeful. You understand that the work you do requires your commitment and in turn you derive enrichment from the work.
Not every job we do does require a full application of our abilities but unless we apply our abilities we may be prone to problems like stress and discomfort. At the same time I think there are opportunities when we can apply our skills but we do not try because we think it is not what our boss wants us to do.
Toward that end, ask yourself three questions:
What are my strengths? Strengths are a combination of talent and skills. Talent is based upon proclivity and predisposition and skills derive from what you have mastered from schooling and experience. Knowing what you are good at is essential to your success in the workplace.
How can I apply them differently than I do today? Doing what you are doing now may be fine for today but what about tomorrow? Many employees look actively to acquire new skills, along with new training, to prepare for the next job. Doing so also positions you to assume greater levels of responsibility.
What will I do if I cannot use them? This question may be the easiest to answer but the hardest to implement because it may provoke a separation. Reality tells us that not every job is for us.
I recall my first full-time job and the disappointment I felt when I was told that I would not be allowed to make a documentary film about a subject that I thought would be very important to the company. My desire to make the film was more about doing what I thought I could do well rather than what my boss needed me to do in my job as copywriter and audio producer. And yes my dissatisfaction level grew but it was not my boss’s fault. I was simply not right for the job, and soon enough I moved on – better for me, and better for the company, too.
Stress arises when we feel underutilized but happiness rises when we feel we are being purposeful. Finding that balance in the workplace is a challenge that every employee must answer for him or herself.

Reasons to Love Working From Home


 how much I hate being asked if I work from home. I don’t like working from home, and I usually find the question insulting, as it seems to imply that my company is so small that I could easily run it out of my house. It also feels like I’m being asked this question because I’m a woman in my early thirties with a young child, which is equally frustrating. However, as it turns out, these days companies of all sizes have home-based employees — both men and women — and there are a lot of benefits to working from a home office. Here are five reasons that working from home is appealing, especially for companies in the start-up phase.
1) Capital Conservation. Startups are like standard transmission

Buyers Beware "Private Clouds" That Aren't Clouds at All


Unlike many other technology terms that have come and gone, “cloud” will be with us for a long time, but it has become so widely used it has lost its meaning. To understand what someone is talking about, you usually need a modifier, and private cloud is one of the most popular forms that the cloud has taken.
But there is a huge divide in what people mean by private clouds.

5 Ways Cloud Computing is Disrupting Everyone's Job


A few months back, IDC released a study, underwritten by Microsoft, that predicted cloud computing would eventually add about 14 million jobs to the global economy. Of course, those are direct jobs cited in the study, such as developers. Of even greater significance are the jobs indirectly affected by cloud. Essentially, we could be talking about every job in every organization that will either be enhanced or diminished with the arrival of cloud. But no matter how you look at it, cloud will be part of many job descriptions to be written over the next few years.
Building a new career, on the cloud. Photo: Joe McKendrick
Ironically, as cloud sweeps through with new ways of running businesses, we’ll be calling it “cloud” less and less. It will simply be the way information is delivered and processed, without the need to think whether it comes from an outside service or from internal systems.  Here are five key ways cloud computing is reshaping the way business is conducted: